At the beginning of the week the Find Your Talent team attended the launch event of the Children Leeds Children and Young People’s Plan. This event was a great opportunity to promote the FYT programme to professionals and young people; and to raise awareness about the Culture Network.

The day included different participatory activities including a brilliant Wake Up Shake Up session lead by children from Kerr Mackie primary school. The young people presenting the sessions were fantastic and shared their experiences about the different ways they have been involved in shaping our services by becoming Anti-bullying Ambassadors and Find Your Talent Arts Ambassadors supported by Find Your Talent.

The Letterbox Club is a scheme aiming to improve the educational outlook for looked after children aged 7-11 by providing them with a parcel of books and activities once every month for six months.

Find Your Talent and Children Leeds have provided funding for Leeds Libraries to work with children in care through the Letterbox scheme and, so far, more than 100 children have benefitted from this opportunity.

Leeds is trialling an innovative new approach to the scheme that encourages looked after children and carers to develop links with libraries by collecting the book parcels from their local library.

The eye catching red parcels have been bursting at the seams this summer thanks to a donation of free books from the Bookaboo initiative. Titles in the bonus bundle include childrens classics Cat In The Hat and Paddington Bear.

What was FYT?

Find Your Talent was a national programme to explore new ways of opening up cultural and creative opportunities to young people. Leeds was one of the ten FYT Pathfinders in England.

The programme was led by Leeds City Council and Education Leeds, working closely together and with the city's cultural and community sectors to find ways for more young people to participate in the cultural life of the city.

FYT was funded to operate between 2008-2011 but its legacy in Leeds continues through activities under the Breeze banner, as well as other initiatives.